Out of Touch Marilyn Wann: Let's Have a Parade!

Is it just me, am I too serious of a person, or are all the party balloons, clowns, parades and belly dancers in the size acceptance world just a bit too CLOYING?

Yeah I am the personality who wishes it was 1890, collects stamps and loves antiques but there is something about Marilyn Wann that grinds my gears and I find so disingenuous. What about a little self respect? Why do us fat people have to "prove" ourselves to the rest of the world, like on a hyper-jolly freak out wearing pink and or pink hair to win the affections of others? It is actually kind of a world of froth to the more intellectual among us. Even outside to the more conservative, what if you do not relate to or agree with the hyper-liberal identity politics?Sex worker parade? You HAVE got to be kidding me, what does this mean, that now we have to support vice and prostitution too? Well I talked about what I saw in size acceptance myself. I know many in San Francisco have lost it, but guess that tells me enough there.

I vote for a big, fat parade for all of us! As a fat activist, I want people of all body types to waddle with me. A big, fat parade is also a sex-worker parade and an antiracism parade and a parade for gender diversity and a parade with people of different abilities and mobilities and a queer march and an all-ages parade, and more. Because that's who we are.

Instead of making long lists of outsider groups who deserve long-overdue welcome and then debating who's deserving and who isn't, what if we were all welcome all the time?

What would Marilyn Wann say to me, if I told her, I can't walk enough to be in a parade? Remember I do not use a scooter, though I do own one, I actually refused a wheelchair years ago, fearing I would lose mobility. What would a parade mean to my personal life? Some of my friends are thin, are they going to have a THIN parade to counteract my FAT parade? LOL

Then there is her weird "I am so healthy" message, OK we get it. She has been repeating it for years. I agree there are many mid-sized people out there, who while they probably aren't going to do an Iron Man marathon, can be pretty healthy, but what does this say to fat people who aren't? At least she has tempered some of that down.

I'll be there to continue learning what I can do. As a fat activist, I often want to say, "But I'm healthy! Look, I eat my veggies and exercise." While it's fun to flout stereotypes, social justice is unacceptably precarious if it depends on good behavior, or on access to other flavors of unearned privilege. For example, gaining respect for fat people who happen to be rich or healthy or white or able-bodied at the expense of other fat people is just more yuck, not yum. Human rights should be based on the fact that we're all here, not on some begrudging notion that some of us should or would change if we could.

Sigh...my world view doesn't even match these folks, not at all nor do I want it too. It's too bad that fat people are being suckered into this stuff....

Perhaps they see the socialist 'Communist? Left? as their fat salvation for real [notice the name of the group she lovingly mentions CASTRO towards the end...that her friend is in]....however once the gulags are in place, and food is meted out via portion control and fiat, perhaps they ought to rethink that, and understand how food and everything else was controlled even in China under Mao, with every village council counting the food, and number of chickens and pigs.

What is sad is how this type of rhetoric does to affect fat people. "Have a parade!"

Years ago, I got in a conversation with Marilyn Wann or someone claiming to be her online but it was her message board so believed it was her, I think at the time I was near my peak weight and probably about to die, wish I could remember the exact year but it was at least 10 years ago if not more. I told her, "Please go to a nursing home that specializes in bariatrics to see what obesity really does to people and how it ravages lives". She was actually quite offended by this. Even one of my friends who had lost weight but had grown more ill from another condition, was in a nursing home where she saw a score of people too overweight to function in their 30s, and 40s and beyond. Marilyn Wann probably would be in shock that I am even still alive to this day. This was around the time right before I lost weight down from near 700lbs and got involved in my last community. I described my life at the time to her. I felt absolutely no empathy whatsoever, and was condemned for not being "fat positive". She seems to be another "community organizer" and "social engineer" type that cares nothing about normal fat people, just there to influence minds and opinions for the powers that be throwing up distraction. For someone like this, I am sure it's a good money-making gig but not much more then that, but she doesn't speak for me.

17 comments:

I have been reading this blog, and have learned much from it. I admire the way you pose many of the issues you tackle. You have a fine mind and are usually a graceful writer and thinker.

That said, I do not understand at all why you are going after Marilyn Wann or fat studies. Wann may seem preachy and annoying to you, but for many fat women she has been an inspiration. Just because she doesn't "speak for you" doesn't mean that her words and thoughts have not inspired others. And you are 100% wrong to think that people like Wann are not supportive of trying to help their fat brothers and sisters who are sick. Ask yourself, compared to the rest of American society, do you think that the Wann-wing of the size acceptance movement is not any more sympathetic to the plight of people like you - you know perfectly well that is not true.

Fat Studies. I agree that some of the rhetoric, ripped out of context, can sound strange. But there is a LOT more to what people are doing in fat studies than in those quotes. I'm sorry you had a crappy feminist studies class, but I don't think if you had a bad class in biology you would sneer and dismiss all of biological science, would you?

Also, with fat studies, you are kind of missing the larger picture. the fact that any college or university is beginning to include fat studies in the curriculum is a sign that at least smart people are trying to understand why fat people have been oppressed. this requires unmasking the stereotypes and injustices that you've written about so many other times on this blog. And really, there are parallels to other groups that have faced stereotyping and discrimination.

I want to stress that I love this blog, and I think you have a lot of important things to teach us, but you seem to have some kind of severe limitation when it comes to thinking about size acceptance as a multi-dimensional movement. That puzzles me. You are too smart for that.

Hi Anon, I am glad you like the blog and admire things about it. thanks for the compliments too.

With Marilyn Wann, I had personal run-ins with her on her message board. I *think* it was her, as it was someone going by her name and I figure she would moderate her own message board.

She kept up the positive fat line, when I told her, look for some of us obesity destroys our lives. I was in the 600s somewhere, just losing down from near 700 and in and out of the hospital constantly. I just do not see Marilyn Wann dealing with reality when she writes things like this:

http://www.feminist-reprise.org/docs/wann1.htm

"We don’t know whether making fat people thinner will make them healthier."

Why is weight loss automatically villified. In some ways, some can say weight loss saved my life. If I had not gotten the first 150lbs off, I would be dead. And yes, I am still hugely fat and in my case fat had many complex causes but remember what I said on that one article about the truth falling inbetween the two sides? Not sure if you saw that one.

What I consider the obesity dialectic is the NEVER SAY DIET FAT PROMOTERS VS the DIET INDUSTRY-WE HATE FAT PEOPLE EVERYONE MUST BE STICK THIN WHICH PROFITS OFF FAILURE, two sides against the middle and to be frank some of us fat people just want to STAY ALIVE.

I asked her to her face on that message board. GO VISIT A BARIACTRIC NURSING HOME, and deal with the realities. As far as I know she never did. Hey maybe she could prove me wrong and go visit one. They are few and far between [the ones who specialize in obesity where the severely overweight are not just mixed with a general nursing home population] but do exist.

Marilyn Wann may serve a purpose for the smaller midsized, healthier, crowd who do need some acceptance and self esteem, but even I find myself kind of cringing even worrying about some young women who may be hitting the upper 200s and 300s, what if their weight goes up, up, up. For many of us obesity is a far harder disease to bear then just exercise, move around and "eat healthy", we get super-fat anyway! Prior to my severe weight gain, I walked MILES for fun!I still got fat!

I have not seen any support from Marilyn Wann regarding those who are fat and sick, or those who are in my weight categories. In fact even when I read her book Fatso and was new to it all, I remember reading her book, and crying, because she talked about being healthy and I knew I was dying. That was at the PEAK WEIGHT.

Remember I have dealt with her directly. She saw me [as almost dying near 700lb woman] on par with the worse fat haters. It was the strangest thing. That is where ideology outranked reality. I was dying, Thank God I bought 10 plus more years. Even now I feel like I am just jumping ahead of congestive heart failure and the rest of my problems to stay alive. Perhaps she has changed since then, everyone is capable of change, but what I saw then scared me and stuck with me, and I saw those same attitudes all over the place which resulted in this article....

So I just do not see the support. In fact I find much of her ideological standings HARMFUL. Wann would be offended that I want a real cure and help for fat people that actually works, that is not based in hatred or shame. I can even tolerate some of what HAES teaches obviously there are things I agree with there but when these times tell me I must deny my own reality I am out of there....

http://fivehundredpoundpeeps.blogspot.com/search/label/Ideologues

I honestly do not see Wann as sympathetic to my plight. Wann is Left Coast enough, but not like my independent thinking friends but perhaps more liberal then me folks but someone that I see as a out of touch "BOBO", [a term from this book]

http://www.amazon.com/Bobos-Paradise-Upper-Class-There/dp/0684853787

The protected world of academia and elites, [in San Francisco] are the circles she runs in. I am an independent obviously LOL. No professor will come running to this website to ask me to do a FAT STUDY. Even there, FAT STUDIES is more about ideology then science, and keep in mind I am not a Republican either, but do I want fat people divided into another "protected class" where actually this INCREASES our balkinization from others? I question a lot of what our colleges teach too, indoctrinating youth into navel-gazing nonsense when it comes to some of this stuff. What is fat studies going to mean to someone like me, who walks down the hallway of her apartment everyday to avoid the nursing home? [By the way I have teetered on that cusp the last three years]

With Wann, Someone like me, a fat women who is esconded in the lower socioeconomic classes, who has been faced my harsh reality, her world does not equate. Of course in my case, I have friends outside my own little bubble, that includes even people in different economic groups, but I somehow do not see that as applying the other way. Even her rhetoric seems to come just out of , well I am midsized and healthy and supposely her experience is supposed to apply to everyone else. I know and admit there are healthy midsized people living active and good lives, unyoke the fat shame and be happy! I agree. But with Wann, its like she would love to throw a blanket over me, and say "DON'T LOOK OVER HERE! She makes us fat people look bad because she is not healthy!" Because she is at weights that preclude activity, walking and being part of day to day life.

I will admit I am not a feminist, and well I am not a patriarchy person on the other side either. Feminist brought some good things to women, property rights and shelters but lost its way when it became about giving the corporations, a two for one deal, and eroding families. I guess here I will admit I do not even agree with Wann's world view even from my own religious viewpoints. This includes the world view of some of size acceptance.

Check this out...MORE FOCUS ON THE BODY to HELP FAT PEOPLE??? Huh....

http://www.bodyloverevolution.com/

What does this do, but make being fat worse when the BODY HAS BEEN RELEGATED AS EVERYTHING?

I reject even some of the foundational premises of what is behind some of this stuff.

I am not sure about size acceptance being a multi-dimensional movement. I guess I look outside "isms" and "movements". Movements get too caught up in 'heroes' and have too many social programmers with too many agendas some that are nefarious in nature. This blog is about just trying to defend and help fat people like myself.

With Wann, I have just wanted more honesty and I DO see her as part of what I refer to as the OBESITY DIALECTIC.

I think Wann is smart too, so why not look at where I am coming from or what many severely overweight people in this world are dealing with?

"I felt absolutely no empathy whatsoever, and was condemned for not being "fat positive". She seems to be another "community organizer" and "social engineer" type that cares nothing about normal fat people, just there to influence minds and opinions for the powers that be throwing up distraction"

I really do believe this.

After all, the fat promotion keeps fat people from demanding real help where fat shame and hatred are taken out of the equation.

Also too NO CHALLENGE there either for the diet brokers and rest who profit off the FAILURE and REPEAT BUSINESS when it comes to the problem of OBESITY.

Thanks for writing me too. With Wann, consider what I mean when I write about the "FAT" PROMOTERS helping the DIET INDUSTRY from the opposite side. I know sometimes I think very differently about things, but that is one, I really want to clearly communicate to people. As I wrote some one before, when NAAFA changed the last part of its name to "FAT" ACCEPTANCE instead of AID to FAT AMERICANS.

HiI appreciate your thoughtful comments and replies, and understand what you are saying much better. I think where I disagree comes down to three big points:

First, you’ve persuaded me about one important thing, one which size acceptance movement people need to pay more attention to, which is that there is a big difference between the ordinary fat person who faces discrimination and hatred but can otherwise function at their current size, and the (relatively smaller) group of super-sized people who faces different problems. The ‘one rhetoric fits all sizes’ model may actually exclude you and others. And that is a fair point.

But aren’t the vast majority of people in the first category of relatively smaller people? For them, I don’t quite see how size acceptance is a bad thing in any way. Fat women who learn to accept themselves as worthy beings after a lifetime of hearing the opposite message is a pretty wonderful thing. But is it a double-edged sword, as you imply? Well, you would have to be able to persuade me that SA causes people to engage in behavior that will in fact make the poor helpless fatties who admire Marilyn Wann sick and unhappy (and obviously here I’m using Marilyn Wann as a stand-in for all manner of Dimensions-type fat empowerment rhetoric).

So if I am understanding you correctly, you are worried that a 25 or 30 yo woman who weighs, let us say, 350 pounds, discovers SA, starts to feel better about her body, begins dating FAs, will be more likely to gain weight such that her health will become endangered.

Hmmmm. I’m doubtful. Everyone gains weight as they enter middle age. Why would the already fat person be less likely to do so but for their exposure to the BBW community? We can easily misattribute the weight gain to the latter when in fact it is just part of living in American society.

Second point. As it happens, I am a college professor, I am not a big fan of ‘oppressed people’s studies’ and am skeptical about the quality and rigor of these programs and the scholarship associated with them. That said, I would ask you to think about perhaps being a bit easier on them in the following sense. Every new field of study is rough when it gets off the ground. When the traditional social sciences were getting started there was a lot of dreadful work being done that we would laugh at today (economics, political science, sociology, etc.). Eventually the BS will go away because nobody is going to be persuaded by it. The better work will, over a period of time, begin to define the fields. Or they will die. I think that is, in fact, happening (universities are disinvesting in oppressed people’s studies where they are weak and bad).

Also, some of the most important work on “fat studies” is being done not by scholars in oppressed people’s studies programs, but by economists who have rigorously estimated the wage losses associated with fatness, sociologists who have studied the nature and sources of prejudice, psychologists who have worked on how the brain interacts with the desire to eat, stuff like that. It won’t be in any ‘fat studies’ reader, but there is a whole set of social scientists doing good rigorous and important fat studies. Eventually that work will take over the field. You watch. 10 years from now…

I sense there is a big contradiction on this blog – but more generally for most of us who think about these issues – in how you characterize the tension between SA’s endorsement of fat acceptance (which you say is deeply problematic) and the realities of obesity in America (which you so eloquently analyze elsewhere in the blog).

Here’s the issue: there are many reasons why people get fat. And, like it or not, virtually no one can lose and keep off more than 10% of their current body weight. Diets almost always fail. (I would add that your success in getting from 700 to 500 and staying there seems much more about some very deep metabolic issues you had that caused the nearly 400 pound gain you’ve described…I think that is VERY unusual and does not fit hardly any other person’s situation). We could go through the evidence that diets fail in general, for most people, but I don’t think you doubt this.

(I bracket WLS here – that is a can of worms and I don’t see any evidence that it is the magic bullet until the procedures improve and are safer; no convincing evidence that they make people on balance healthier 10 years out; etc.etc. Although we still need a lot more long-term research to know for sure)

We’re completely on the same page about trying to resist some of the things that are making all Americans fatter – too many unhealthy processed foods, too many sedentary lifestyles. The school lunches should be made healthier. We should tax sugar more. Ban tans-fat. Etc. etc.

BUT: in the meantime, we have a whole lot of fat people who are going to be fat no matter what. We can try to keep them from getting fatter, but the entire society and culture is pushing them in the opposite direction. Most of us will weigh 10 pounds more than we do now in 5 years (and, as a percentage of body-weight, for a fat person that might mean 20 pounds). It takes effort to not gain weight, not to mention losing weight.

If these points are basically true, as I think you would have to agree given what you’ve written elsewhere on this blog, than I would have to ask: what in the world is wrong with fat acceptance? Don’t we have to learn to accept fatness, and figure out how to manage it? Shouldn’t we be encouraging the use of resources in that way?

Take the diabetes epidemic. Yes, one partial solution would be to get all diabetic or near-diabetic Americans to eat mostly greens and exercise an hour a day for the rest of their lives. But I would much rather see us pour resources into helping people manage their diabetes rather than pouring resources into a losing fight against fatness.

I am glad I was able to persuade you that for us super-sized people we are dealing with other problems and that the 'one rhetoric fits all sizes" excludes us, happy to hear that. That one alone sometimes is hard to convince some in size acceptance. Those who are large but can live relatively healthy lives are in a different ballgame then us very super-sized. You are right the vast majority are in the smaller category. I hope I did not mislead, I think it's Ok for many of them to learn to accept themselves and throw off the diet shackles and not live their life depressed because of a few pounds. One can see that in even thin and average folks. Perhaps size acceptance to a point is not a bad thing for those folks, but it comes down to the fact, that then these things do not apply to the super-sizes. If people are going to buy into an ideology however then truth needs to be told about that ideology, maybe that it has limits?

There The exclusion holds. I do not begrudge them their groups or even feeling better about themselves, just here to share my reality even if it is so very different.

I saw women who were young who kept gaining weight while in SA, not just middle age spread, but like a 25 year old gaining over the next few years. If she gets hooked up with those who are really "fat positive" and buys the "free eating" rhetoric, there can be dangers there. That may have worked with real food 50 years ago where people listened to diet and hunger cues, instead of the sort of food we have today where they pour chemicals into it to addict people or jack up the hunger levels. What about young women influenced by feeders who may be introduced to that world? One thing with weight, is I think they need to look at PREVENTION too. Weight gains can take people over like a tsunami, even if not health related, its something that can get away from folks.

You are right even in the normal workaday world out of SA many people gain weight. My trouble is, remember I do not want to see any other young woman go through what I did. Realize I went from normal to disabled pretty fast and even if mine was health related, what if it happens slower to another woman?You have to keep in mind, I have to WATCH FOOD NOW, NOT TO GAIN, even if I have stayed at a very high weight. Remember I was near 700lbs and am in low 500s. What worries me about size acceptance is they tell people this vigilance is a bad thing, well while we know the nightmares of dieting and those who sweat over every celery stick driving us nuts, the opposite is a bad too.

As a 320 lb. woman at age 49, who has put on 200 lbs. beginning in my late 20s after being exposed to size acceptance, reading that god-awful "Intuitive Eating" book, which is the one book on the face of the earth I honestly think should be banned because it is so nutritionally irresponsible and dishonest in saying following its advice will cause weight loss for anyone plus-size, and experiencing extreme judgment in the community about anyone who didn't practice "intuitive eating" and size acceptance, I can tell you there is MUCH harm that can come from some of the SA messages.

The first and worst is that "intuitive eating" is the only right way to do HAES or SA or to stop gaining weight. WRONG, as my story illustrates. Those authors should have their nutrition licenses yanked. They tell people to load up the house with massive amounts of one's forbidden foods--the foods a person has the hardest time not bingeing on--and then to not eat at meal times, just at a certain point on some vague "hunger scale"--for a person who is totally out of touch with when she feels hungry or full, and has learned perhaps for years from diets to tune out her hunger, and who then binges as a result when she finally she realizes she's starving. And there, low and behold, is mountains of her most likely binge foods.

Setting aside all the weight gain this can cause for a moment, what kind of responsible nutrition advice is this?

How is this NOT a set up for bingeing on the foods one deeply feels bad about eating (despite trying to "think positively" about eating or bingeing on those foods to the contrary.)

And what about the self-recrimination and self-hatred that kicks in when this person who already felt bad enough about her body to have a herstory of dieting binges on less-healthy foods and gains weight?

Oh, and to top it all off, the authors say, "You may gain weight for awhile eating this way, but it will eventually come off, so don't worry. Trust the process. Trust us."

And of course, if you keep gaining weight, they say, you're doing it wrong. You're not *really* eating intuitively, so try harder to tune in (and spend your entire day doing nothing else if need be, to wait until your hunger is an ambiguous, mysterious "3" on the hunger scale.)

Eating sooner is "wrong" and eating later is "wrong," which is a great set up for a out-of-touch dieter to wait too long and then binge.

All of these messages, from obligation by the community, to the totally unstructured "intuitive eating" program that is a set-up for poor nutrition and increased self-recrimination, is a perfect storm for profound weight gain, poor eating, and no one in the SA community to turn to, to talk about it, for support or better advice.

We're just supposed to deny how we really feel about the ensuing bingeing on less-healthy foods, the weight gain, and how we feel about that weight gain with our herstories of body and eating shame in a fat-phobic society, and pretend all of the above doesn't affect us emotionally, psychologically, and nutritionally.

As if I wasn't already eating-disordered or ED enough, this from the SA community where I lived was the nail in the coffin to give me an ED.

I am not the first person who gained lots of weight from "intuitive eating" and SA. I bet many people in SA have.

In fact that would be a great poll to do:

Have you gained, lost, or maintained your weight since first learning about and trying to practice SA?

I can't tell you how relieved I am to have now finally found the ED community and learning I can be accepted there, where I have been totally supported in having a non-dieting eating plan.

I'm not saying throw the baby out with the bath regarding SA, but I think the unquestioned reverence for intuitive eating and demonizing of anyone who even practices, let alone espouses anything else, is totally irresponsible from a psychological and physical health standpoint.

Ah that book "Intuitive Eating" what a joke that book was, you got that right, and I remember reading the "Intuitive eating" message in many a SA book. Hey they aren't going to be dealing with the millions of broken metabolisms from our crap food and toxic society just float out this type of nonsense. I think it is nutritionally irresponsible too. Given that insulin resitance is through the roof and other problems, we cannot even trust HUNGER signals like before. THEY ARE BROKEN. I doubt that book led ANYONE to LOSE WEIGHT.I think people need to GO OFF FREE FEEDING and the AMERICAN SNACK TIME schedule. I actually when I had my original weight loss, put myself on a timed eating schedule, it is harder to adhere to when I am low on groceries but it is what I follow daily. I hate to say it but my body is BROKEN when it comes to metabolizing food and burning it off, why should I trust it's hunger signals? Yes there is a point where the body needs food, the diabetes etc....but their advice is insane for the fat. Totally insane. Intuitive eating isnt going to work for someone already fat, the hunger signals are broken, the metabolism is trashed. They are joking. Also the idea of fat person keeping troublesome foods in the house is insane. I love pie, but I only let myself buy pie, a few times a year.[then its a half of one and a 1 piece eaten a day. I would have to be insane to allow free feeding and every food I love in the world in the apt. I can't afford a lot of food now anyhow. The end of the month for me is always scrounge time.

Yeah I know that is the kind of garbage they tell young women in SA. Also where is weight prevention or these people being warned of what comes in the higher weights? Ah they got mad at me in the local NAAFA club back then for being so upset about my weight gain and demanding answers from doctors. Ah insanity!Part #2

Look at this blog of mine.

I have talked about what is being done to our food for 2 years on here.

Does anyone in size acceptance care, outside of the few individuals that post here?

Not really....

You won't see Marilyn Wann talking about the fat and sugar and poor nutrition in our food anytime soon.

I was involved in "size acceptance" at the peak of the weight gain...[social group and local NAAFA] I was told to deny my feelings about my weight gain, and the outcomes of it all, and actually some people got angry at me for not being happy and healthy enough. You see how I talk about the fat acceptance world serving as the inverse side of the coin to the fat haters. They caused me as much shame as the worse fat haters in the world. To be frank their entire answer for fat people is DENIAL, and in that denial they expect us to play pretend and act like we are not impacted emotionally, psychologically and the rest. The phony baloney INTUITIVE EATING PROGRAM goes hand in hand.

One thing with people who have ED problems and binge eating, you are right this advice is DANGEROUS.

By the way, I had my weight gain before I got involved with SA, but I SAW young 200 something women turning into 300 and 400lb something women....while in SA, that definitely was a problem.

I am glad you have found the ED community, I do think help can be found there for people dealing with that problem. That is one thing ignored in size acceptance...no lets make that two...

People who are fat from PHYSIOLOGICAL REASONS--My story with the severe PCOS, thyroid etc disease, and steroid use for my lungs...

People who are fat from PSYCHOLOGICAL reasons, EDs and the binge eating...etc [some may have increased hunger from physiological and satiety disorders]

Then those with a combo and other factors, genetics, etc.

SA basically pretends all of these do not exist.

I believe as you can see someone should stand up against fat discrimination and for fat people but Im not buying a lot of what the SA world is selling. They are caught up in their phony baloney identity politics and the promotion of FAT itself and not helping FAT PEOPLE anymore in ways that count.

You are right this stuff is irresponsible and dangerous as well to people's health.

Thanks for telling me you are a college professor, glad you found my blog too. I think a lot of the oppressed people's studies actually lead to more oppression focusing on what some would call their "otherness". I see hyper fat rights in some ways making things worse for fat people. I just want to live in peace and not be discriminated against, treated like a human being. I question the scholarship of those programs too. You probably can tell I have some alternative political and other viewpoints, I do not fit the mainstream there. Often I feel like a lot of academic progams like this area advancing certain social and other agendas, not all necessarily agree with. I do not mind that they are studying fat people, do not get me wrong. I have even said myself there needs to be some intense research [that is financed by the bariactric surgeons] on people in my size ranges. Even socially there can be some decent studies, [well free of more of the dominant leftist [and I am no Republican either by the way] political agendas] describing what it is really is that fat people go through. Some of these things I wish they'd study are outlined on this blog...

Fat people's bodies work different

Fat people are hungrier

Some real studies truth is sought even over the societal development of fat would be of interest.

You are right, I will concede some studies started off with dreadful results.

I respect the economic studies, some of those are of interest, probably even posted on this blog. I would like to see some of those advanced. With the fat studies though I see language that even bothers me, that smacks it seems more of social programming and agendas rather then true science.

Look at this class for example...

http://www.handbook.mq.edu.au/2012/Units/UGUnit/CUL324

Too many politics. If the extremes of a spectrum are excluded there is a problem with the objectiveness.

In other words why wouldn't fat be medicalized when our air waves are full of those who cannot even walk due to obesity? By the way, I can still walk, not great of course, but I have seen those in far worse shape on TV.

I would like to see more studies done, by the sociologists, psychologists and even the medical world.

Ok after you read that, realize I see size acceptance almost as standing in the way of a study like that. They would say how dare you get a cure for fat! [I do not consider what they consider "cures" for fat now like dieting etc, to be anything near the definition of a "cure" or effective medical treatment]

One thing why isn't some of the medical, psychological and sociological stuff in those fat study readers? Maybe it is time for it to be.

As for the contradiction, can one be against discrimination against the fat and still desire REAL medical help regarding obesity?

I dare say that answer can be yes.

I have written this before, the problems in size acceptance began when NAAFA changed the end of thier name AID FAT AMERICANS to ADVANCE FAT ACCEPTANCE.

People should come before the pounds.

Also some in size acceptance seem to be denying there is a fat epidemic at all. I find that ludicrous even dealing with what my own eyes have seen.

Some of the reasons people are getting fat now are not good ones.

I see the increased obesity due to a toxic culture on so many levels [and not just weight by the way, but the increased cancer rates, autoimmune disease and mental illness]

Maybe this is a point where I definitely part ways with size acceptance. It is odd, the world they seem to see is a Utopian world, not one where corporations are pouring chemicals into our food, or fattening MSG. I see obesity as a SYMPTON, especially in its extreme forms. There is a reason that our bodies are not working right metabolically in burning food off, and it goes way beyond calories in and calories out. Of course you have seen me examine the many theories on this blog. I have even come up with a few of my own.

Size acceptance almost seems to want to say, oh everyone is getting fat, don't worry about it!I just can't get on board with that, not when weight has caused me so much personal suffering and I see plenty of even the smaller people suffer 300lbs and over, where they leave the fat but still active land, and find their feet hurting and health problems proliferating.

You are right diets fail. But why can't fat people demand things that work, without abuse and discrimation. My blog is here to say, SHAPE UP PEOPLE< STOP PROFITTING OFF US< AND DO SOMETHING RIGHT! LOL

ou are right, I probably fit a very unusual category, extreme weight, serious metabolic issues, which several doctors have admitted but there are others too getting in my shoes. I think a lot of them are NOT making it, they end up in the nursing home and die, I just stay out of the nursing home now, but that even takes some pain everyday trying to move this body around and forcing myself to take walks, eat healthy and constant maintenance to even stay out of the hospital. So even if I am unusual, kind of the fat canary in the coalmine, why are we seeing so many people hitting these high weights now? Why are so many people even dealing with the midsized obesity?

WLS I see as a failure. Some do take a spin of the roulette wheel and win but many do not and they just trade the suffering of obesity for other health problems. So we agree there. I agree about the health stuff, though in my case, I probably would say there is more insidious stuff going on out there, where the fattening up of the populace could be due to profit motives, did you see the MSG is used to fatten up rats blog entry?

http://fivehundredpoundpeeps.blogspot.com/2011/10/msg-is-used-to-make-lab-rats-fat-how.htmlWe are getting a richer class of healthy people who can afford the DECENT food vs. the poor who get more stuck with the chemical laden modern Soylent green.

You are right there are people who will be fat no matter what, there is no way, we could have the populace all be thin, and why would we want that. There is a variation within humans, but I dare say, that a lot of the obesity now is a sympton, and that needs addressed. Size acceptance almost seems to says, well we are fat, we do not want to be made fun of, so do not dig too deep on what is making us all fat!

Remember the post where I wrote the two sides of the coin thing? Did you read what I wrote about the Helegian Dialectic?

When size acceptance basically says we must advance fat so we are not discriminated against, it puts fat people in a double bind. Especially big fat people who have left healthy,active and large world.

That is what is wrong with size acceptance.

They actually flutter and react with horror to a fat woman who has almost died from obesity, saying you know what I think fat hatred stinks, but what about a cure for fat? What about real things that work and addressing some of the toxic things in this society? The reaction I have gotten is fluttering handwaving and "Oh we can't do that!" and outraged cries of "You hate your fat!"

Why not accept FAT PEOPLE

and LEAVE those who want to ACCEPT "FAT" in the deluded political camp?

Sometimes I wonder if the social programmers want to keep American people from really asking why are our bodies growing so huge? [ergo what I am talking about regarding size acceptance and the two sides of the coin Hegelian dialectic stuff]